CONVERTI Niccolò
(Roseto Capo Spulico (Cosenza) 18.3.1855 – Tunisi (Tunisia) 14.9.1939)
Pubblicato nei volumi: L'Internazionale italiana fra libertari ed evoluzionisti
Nato
a Roseto Capo Spulico nel 1855 da Leonardo e da Elisabetta Aletta.
Proveniente da una famiglia i cui genitori erano entrambi benestanti,
compie gli studi inferiori a Corigliano e a Cosenza per trasferirsi poi a
Napoli dove, finito il liceo, si iscrive alla facoltà di medicina. Alla
laurea arriva tuttavia solo molti anni dopo quando, nel 1909, ritorna
in Calabria per la prima volta dopo ventiquattro anni di permanenza
all’estero. A Napoli stringe rapporti con gli ambienti progressisti, e
attraverso Emilio Covelli aderisce all’Internazionale ed inizia la sua
poi lunga e prolifica attività di giornalista. Nel 1878 entra nella
redazione del bisettimanale Il Masaniello, che
propugna l’alleanza con i “socialisti autoritari”, poi fonda il Circolo
“Pisacane”, divenendone il segretario. Ammonito nel 1881 e denunciato
varie volte anche negli anni seguenti, nel 1885 fonda e redige Il Piccone,
che prende posizione sia contro i socialisti legalitari che contro la
propaganda irridentista dei repubblicani. Il 1885 è l’anno della svolta.
Condannato dal tribunale di Firenze a ventidue mesi di carcere per aver
sottoscritto un manifesto dell’Internazionale e come corresponsabile
del periodico di Malatesta La Questione Sociale, fugge
all’estero. Attraverso la Corsica si stabilisce nella Francia
meridionale. Dapprima a Nizza, dove fa il garzone e il lavapiatti e dove
impone un indirizzo anarchico al periodico Lo Schiavo, quindi a Marsiglia, dove nell’ottobre 1866 fonda il settimanale bilingue L’Internationale anarchiste. Contemporaneamente, anche se dall’estero, collabora e sostiene numerosi fogli italiani: come Il Demolitore, organo del circolo napoletano, Il Lavoratore, la Rivista internazionale del socialismo di Milano, il settimanale di Pesaro In marcia! e Il Proletario di
Palermo. Nel gennaio 1887 si trasferisce a Tunisi dove, esercitando la
professione di medico negli ospedali locali, rimane poi fino alla morte.
Promotore e presidente per alcuni decenni della Società di soccorso
“Croce verde”, bene accolta anche dai mussulmani, diviene col tempo uno
dei padri del movimento operaio maghrebino. Qui da vita ad un attivo
gruppo anarchico che oltre alla propaganda si dedica anche
all’assistenza degli anarchici condannati al domicilio coatto o
all’organizzazione della loro fuga, come nel 1899 quando si occupa
dell’evasione di Luigi Galleani da Pantelleria. Ma l’impegno maggiore è
volto comunque alla propaganda. Nel 1887 pubblica in una propria
tipografia il settimanale L’Operaio, quale organo degli anarchici di Tunisi e della Sicilia, a cui fa seguito il foglio sindacalista La Voix de l’ouvrier.
L’anno dopo subisce una condanna a quarantadue giorni di carcere e a
500 franchi di multa per un manifesto commemorativo dei martiri di
Chicago, ma in seguito ottiene l’amnistia. Collabora ancora a vari
giornali locali: come Le Petite Tunisie, L’Avenir social, Le Courier, tutti di Tunisi, ed anche alla locale Unione, portavoce della comunità italo-tunisina. Tra il 1894 e il 1913 pubblica anche su vari giornali anarchici francesi ed italiani, quali L’Emancipateur di Algeri, Il Picconiere di Marsiglia, la Nuova Riscossa di Trapani, Il Proletariato di Marsala, La Campana di Ancona, Il Progresso di Palermo, L’Avvenire sociale di Messina e La Protesta umana di Tunisi, che nel 1896 lo annovera tra i suoi promotori. Da ultimo non disdegna di pubblicare anche su giornali come Il Momento di Parigi o Il Secolo e La Gazzetta di Milano. In questi anni scrive anche diversi opuscoli a carattere teorico come Repubblica e Anarchia del 1889, che l’anno dopo gli costa una condanna da parte del tribunale di Palermo a tre mesi di carcere, o come Socialismo o repubblica? e Cosa è il socialismo
del 1900. Nel 1907 incontra probabilmente Costa, durante un viaggio di
questi in Tunisia, e ciò può essere alla base della sua successiva
attività politica. Quando grazie ad un’amnistia può finalmente tornare
in Italia, si presenta infatti candidato della sinistra alle elezioni
politiche dell’ottobre 1913 nel collegio di Cassano Ionio: scelta che
gli scatena contro i durissimi attacchi degli anarchici. Amareggiato, fa
ritorno a Tunisi e, pur non tralasciando di avere contatti con gli
esuli e con gli antifascisti residenti in Tunisia, in Francia e in
America, prende ad occuparsi maggiormente della famiglia e della
professione. Da quella data e sino ai primi anni ’30, lavora come medico
notturno nell’ospedale coloniale italiano G. Garibaldi, di cui era
stato uno dei fondatori. Nel 1931 scrive un articolo commemorativo su
Galleani nella Voce nuova e nell’agosto del 1936, a tre anni dalla morte, partecipa ancora ad una manifestazione a favore del fronte popolare spagnolo.
Fonti: Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Roma), Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, Casellario Politica Centrale, ad nomen; Andreucci Franco, Detti Tommaso, Il movimento operaio italiano. Dizionario biografico, Roma, E. R., 1975-1979, 5 volumi; Dell’Erba Nunzio, Giornali e gruppi anarchici in Italia 1892-1900, Milano, Franco Angeli, 1983; Dizionario Biografico degli Anarchici Italiani, Pisa, Biblioteca F. Serantini editrice, 2003-2004, due volumi; Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Roma, 1960-in corso; Maitron Jean (acd), Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier francais. Troisème partie: 1871-1914. De la Commune à la Grande Guerre, Paris, Les Editions Ouvrieres, 1973-1977; L’Impulso, Livorno, a. VII, 15 gennaio 1955, n. 1, Converti Niccolò (1858-1940).
Le texte qui suit est la présentation de la communication
présentée par Giorgio SACCHETTI (Università di Padova) au colloque
« Presse et exil » (Rome, 23-25 septembre 2013) :
Negli ultimi decenni del XIX secolo si sviluppano, a Tunisi come ad Alessandria d’Egitto, importanti comunità italiane composte sia da emigrati per motivi economici sia da perseguitati politici. La Tunisia, tra i paesi del Maghreb, è stata per più lungo tempo la meta preferita dei flussi provenienti dall’Italia. A minatori, muratori, contadini meridionali, si aggiungono ebrei ed esuli delle antiche battaglie risorgimentali (sono 21.000 gli italiani censiti in Tunisia nel 1891). Anche in Egitto, in concomitanza dei grandi lavori per il Canale di Suez, si forma un’analoga comunità, socialmente assai composita, caratterizzata da una forte presenza di esuli politici, ed altrettanto numerosa (25.000 italiani censiti nel 1897).
In quegli ambiti, spesso effervescenti dai punti di vista culturale e politico, trovano utile spazio la predicazione socialista e anarchica anche attraverso la pubblicazione, sia pure irregolare, di periodici. Le condizioni materiali e giuridiche di produzione e diffusione di questa tipologia di stampa – “sovversiva” –, frutto talvolta di iniziative individuali o di piccoli gruppi, sono rese difficoltose da problematiche ambientali, precarietà economica e condizioni di vita dei redattori / stampatori (che spesso operano in clandestinità) e dagli interventi repressivi del “fisco” locale in genere sollecitato delle autorità consolari italiane.
L’anarchismo italiano ed internazionale, in quanto movimento politico e sociale, vive nel contempo una fase di grande fermento ed è attraversato da forti perturbamenti e stimoli di varia natura. La transizione e la svolta di fine secolo sono connotati sia dalla crisi ideologica interna del movimento anarchico, sia dagli attacchi mirati e coordinati a livello europeo messi in atto dagli apparati statali. Quindi gli organi di stampa risentono indirettamente di ambedue questi fattori: da una parte gli effetti della “legislazione anti-anarchica”, dall’altra il vivace dibattito in corso innescato da Errico Malatesta e Francesco Saverio Merlino (e che verrà a piena maturazione negli anni Novanta) contro il terrorismo propugnato dalle correnti individualiste.
La comunicazione intende effettuare un focus sulle due distinte realtà nordafricane:
Ad esempio « Il Lavoratore », foglio pubblicato ad Alessandria dai bakuninisti italiani in esilio, vede la sua soppressione decretata dopo appena tre numeri dalle autorità egiziane e la contestuale chiusura della tipografia “Ottolenghi”. Successivamente (negli anni Ottanta) funzionerà una stamperia clandestina ad uso dei socialisti anarchici, emanazione di un “Circolo europeo di studi sociali”. L’attività di diffusione di materiali di propaganda libertaria si intreccia con il tentativo di affiancare in armi l’insurrezione arabista del 1882 e con la deriva “illegalista” individualista che, nel corso degli anni Novanta, prende piede nella comunità degli anarchici italiani d’Egitto.
Meno turbolente le vicissitudini de « L’Operaio », settimanale tunisino di lingua italiana promosso e diretto da N. Converti, prolifico scrittore anarchico nonché medico d’ospedale molto conosciuto. Il giornale costituisce insieme un esempio di longevità e precarietà. Si pubblica con varie interruzioni nel periodo 1887 – 1904. Stampato inizialmente nella grande Tipografia “Franco-Tunisienne” e poi in varie altre stamperie professionali, ospita pubblicità commerciali con evidenti finalità di finanziamento: si tratta di trattorie italiane di Tunisi con “servizio di buona cucina a prezzi modestissimi”, di magazzini bazar, dell’ Hotel de Paris, di negozi di liquori… Il Consolato italiano svolge pressioni presso la polizia francese affinché si arresti il redattore responsabile o, quanto meno, si cessino le pubblicazioni del periodico. Ed è il secondo obiettivo che viene alla fine perseguito. Sempre in Tunisia « La Protesta Umana », sottotitolo: Rivista di scienze sociali (medesimo direttore), si trova costretta, nel 1896, a interrompere l’uscita al decimo numero. Ciò a causa dell’entrata in vigore di una legge capestro sulla stampa che impone agli editori esosi versamenti a titolo di cauzione. E neppure andrà in porto il tentativo di trasferire in modo surrettizio la redazione in Italia (a Macerata).
Bibliografia e fonti
– Archivio Centrale Dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale della Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, Casellario Politico Centrale, ai nominativi: Converti Nicolantonio, Parrini Icilio Ugo;
– « L’Operaio », Tunisi, 1887-1904;
– « La Protesta Umana », Tunisi, 1896;
– L. Bettini, Bibliografia dell’anarchismo, volume I, tomo 2, Periodici e numeri unici anarchici in lingua italiana pubblicati all’estero (1872-1971), CP editrice, Firenze, 1976;
– F. Cresti, Comunità proletarie italiane nell’Africa mediterranea tra xix secolo e periodo fascista, « Mediterranea – Ricerche storiche », n. 12, aprile 2008;
– R. D’Angiò, 4 anni in Egitto, « Il Libertario », La Spezia, n. 99, 22 giugno 1905;
– Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français. Troisième partie: 1871-1914. De la Commune à la Grande Guerre, a cura di J. Maitron, Les Éditions Ouvrières, Paris, 1973-1977;
– Dizionario biografico degli anarchici italiani, a cura di M. Antonioli, G. Berti, S. Fedele, P. Iuso, 2. voll., Pisa, BFS, 2003-2004;
– E. Gianni, L’Internazionale italiana fra libertari ed evoluzionisti. I congressi della Federazione Italiana e della Federazione Alta Italia dell’Associazione Internazionale dei Lavoratori (1872-1880), Edizioni Pantarei, Milano, 2008;
– A. Marchi, La presse d’expression italienne en Égypte. De 1845 à 1950, « Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea », n. 5, dicembre 2010;
– G. Masi, Converti Niccolò, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Treccani, vol. 28 (1983);
– P. C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiani da Bakunin a Malatesta, Rizzoli, Milano, 1969;
– P. C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiani nell’epoca degli attentati, Rizzoli, Milano, 1981;
– N. Pasotti, Nicolò Converti, emigrato, medico e rivoluzionario: un calabrese a Tunisi, « La Regione Calabria Emigrazione », nn. 4-5, 1993;
– E. Pea, Vita in Egitto, Arnoldo Mondadori, Milano, 1949;
– A. Riggio, Un libertario calabrese in Tunisia: Nicolò Converti, « Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania », nn. 1-4, 1947;
– “Un Vecchio” [I. U. Parrini], L’Anarchismo in Egitto, « La Protesta Umana », San Francisco Cal., n. 36, 21 novembre 1903;
– E. Zoccoli, L’Anarchia. Gli agitatori, le idee, i fatti, Fratelli Bocca, Milano, 1944.
From entry by G.Masi, in G. Berti, M. Antonioli, P. Juso e S. Fedele
(eds.), "Dizionario biografico degli anarchici italiani," vol. 1 (Pisa:
Biblioteca Franco Serantini, 2003), pp. 439-442.
Born in Roseto Capo Spulico (in the province of Cosenza, Calabria) on 18
March 1855, his parents were Leonardo and Elisabetta Aletta, both from
well-off families. He attended primary school in Calabria and moved to
Naples to attend high school, where his teacher for the final year was
Giovanni Bovio. He went on to university to study medicine, though he
did not graduate - as he said to A[ndrea]Costa (with whom he would
always remain friends) - until several years later in 1909 when, after a
long spell in Tunis, the city he was to choose as his principal
residence, he returned to Italy for the first time.
Becoming attracted to the ideas of libertarian socialism, which were widely known in Naples thanks to the influence of Bakunin who had lived in the town, he became friends with E[milio] Covelli and other Neapolitan militants. He joined the International, quickly becoming the most active member of the Neapolitan group, and carried on intense propaganda activity, both with contributions to the existing press at the time and with the creation of new bulletins. In 1878 he joined the editorial board of the periodical "Il Masaniello" a fortnightly which, in seeking to fill the gap left by the move of the weekly "L'Anarchia" to Florence, favoured an alliance with the authoritarian socialists. The newspaper, however, was short-lived and after nine issues, each systematically impounded by the police, it suspended publication.
Relations between CConverti and the other Internationals, however, did not come to an end, and led to the founding of the "Pisacane" circle, with Converti as secretary and Merlino as treasurer; there were also several projects, such as one to print a Neapolitan anarchist newspaper (entitled "La Campana"), reviving the previous newspaper and founding a newspaper to counter the positions of Costa. Both plans went awry, partly as a result of clashes amongst the workers among the members, who favoured policies linked to the particular problems of labour but who often lacked the ability to think in wider terms, and the "intransigently" anarchist intellectuals, who were all given to utopistic dreaming and were often unable to reconcile "final goals and intermediate objectives".
In May 1885, Converti published "Il Piccone" in brochure format (as it lacked the necessary authorization). It was an anarchist communist newspaper that was quite rigorous with both the legalitarian socialists and Costa, and with the Republicans, who were in those years of irredentism, held to be the most dangerous elements to the anarchist cause. But his forced departure for France meant that he left the Neapolitan anarchist movement in difficulty (and indeed the movement would henceforth become indistinguishable from the socialist movement and radical democracy in general), halting publication of the newspaper for a month and only succeeding in recommencing, until November, thanks to an editorial team composed entirely of students.
Though by now out of Italy, C. also supported "Il Demolitore", the newspaper of the Neapolitan "Il Lavoratore" Circle, in which he published a letter written together with G(aetano?) Grassi where the two anarchists took a strong position in favour of a modern revolutionary organization. He contributed to the Milan magazine, "Rivista internazionale del socialism" (in which he published an article entitled "La proprietà" ["Property"]), to the Pesaro weekly "In Marcia" and to other anarchist-inspired periodicals, including "Il Proletario" from Palermo, in which he published an article entitled Anarchia ["Anarchy"] that concluded by saying "anarchy without communism is impossible". A turning point in his life came in 1885 when, having been sentenced to 22 months in prison for signing "a manifesto by the International (the last to be published in Italy) signed by over 300 delegates of branches and federations", for which "only about fifteen were tried" and "appeals were lodged just to give enough time for the accused to flee the country" ("L'Adunata dei refrattari", 28 Oct. 1939, p.5), he took the decision to leave Italy.
Embarking at Livorno, he took refuge in Corsica and then moved to southern France, first at Nice, where he shifted the editorial line of the newspaper "Lo Schiavo" to one of revolutionary anarchism, and then in Marseilles. Here he would once again begin to engage in revolutionary propaganda and with the help of some Italian and French anarchists, he founded the "L'Internationale anarchiste", which eventually came out on the 16 October 1886 after struggling to find funding. The newspaper, containing articles in both French and Italian, had a run of four issues and was quite an important novelty for the anarchist press.
As he wrote in the editorial, the paper set itself the task of "bringing an end to the hatred created and sustained by the bourgeois press between French and Italian workers", and also the goal engaging in quality criticism of Republican institutions and doctrine.
These positions were later set out in the pamphlet "Repubblica ed Anarchia" (Tunis, 1889), which is the most important theoretical contribution by Converti and were also republished in the Italian press at the time. The programmatic elements of the pamphlet were rejected however, in particular by E. Matteucci in the Rome newspaper "L'Emancipazione", and it was impounded by the authorities. Having failed to conclude an arrangement to contribute regularly to two medical journals in Paris, C. moved definitively to Tunis with his friend Grassi on 10 January 1887, once again leaving the Italian anarchist movement in southern France in difficulty.
Since the earliest period of the liberal movement during the years of the Risorgimento, the African city had become a place of refuge for numerous Italians (particularly Sicilians) suffering from political persecution, and was home to a community of bourgeois and illiterate proletarians who mixed readily with the locals and consisted of over 100,000 individuals by 1912. In this community, considered at the time to be a sort of African appendix to Italy's territory and which was predominantly Italian-speaking, and thanks to the circle of friends he soon made (through his uncle, a bishop, according to some sources), Converti was to live the rest of his life, working with great dedication as a doctor in the local hospitals.
A note by the Prefect of Cosenza indicates that Converti graduated in medicine in Tunis thanks to favourable intervention by a cardinal. But having obtained his degree, his sterling work contributed to the extension of the Tunisian healthcare system -in his opinion far from being acceptable - and setting up the "Green Cross" Relief Society [Società di soccorso "Croce Verde"], to the approval even of Muslims, an organization which he presided over for several decades.
Apart from his work as a doctor to the indigent, C. soon became one of the fathers of the Maghrebi workers movement, continuing his journalistic battles, remaining in contact with international libertarian circles, contributing to several Italian and foreign anarchist papers and publishing "L'Operaio" in 1887, a weekly that described itself as the mouthpiece of the anarchists of Tunis and Sicily. With simple language and a style which avoided emphasis and rhetoric, this "rag" - produced at the newspapers own press - attacked the two main Christian groups of the local bourgeoisie, the French and Italian, thus seeking to "shake the workers and the grey mass of the indifferent out of their apathy" about the exploitation being carried out by the larger companies. Later there followed a syndicalist newspaper, "La Voix de l'Ouvrier", in which Converti busied himself by studying the causes of misery and possible cures for this curse.
At the same time, C. formed an active anarchist propaganda group, a real hive of conspiracy which was also set up in order to organize and aid Italian anarchists who had fled to Tunisia in order to escape forced residence [translator's note: used as punishment for political crimes, but also as a preventive measure; it was not imprisonment or confinement, but one was forced to live in a certain place, usually an inaccessible spot or island and weren't free to move away] in the various islands of Sicily (mainly Favignana and Pantelleria).
In 1896 he started the theoretical magazine "La Protesta umana", whose contributors included well-known libertarian writers of the time such as A[ugustin] Hamon, L[uigi] Fabbri, A[milcare] Cipriani and P. Raveggi. Converti published some of his own writings too, including a three-part essay, "Idee generali" ("General Ideas"), in which he polemicized with the German theoreticians of naturalism about the concept of the State, seen as the "brain" of the social body. There was also an important and vibrant protest in defence of some Italian anarchists who had fled their forced residence, landed on the shores of Tunisia and been handed over to the French and Italian authorities. After an interval of some time due to tax reasons, the magazine was moved for one issue (June 1897) to Macerata, qualifying it as the only anarchist publication [in Italy] at the time.
In order to spread his theories, C. did not disdain from writing for certain bourgeois democratic news-sheets in the years between 1894 and 1913; many French and Italian newspapers, anarchist or otherwise, published his articles concerning the debate on the political and economic organization of the working masses. These papers included: "La Petite Tunisie" from Tunis, "L'Avenir social" and "Le Courier", both from Tunis, "L'Emancipateur" from Algiers, "Il Progresso" from Palermo, "Il Picconiere" from Marseilles, "L'Avvenire sociale" from Messina, all of which were anarchist papers; "Il Secolo" and "La Gazzetta" from Milan, "Il Momento" from Paris and also the "Unione" from Tunis, the official mouthpiece of the Italian community, founded by the Livornese.
In the early 1900s, there was a partial evolution in his revolutionary propaganda, partly due to the conditions of the Tunisian working class, who were the target of great attention from democratic circles, and this led to the creation of benevolent societies as well as a move towards the ideas and the parliamentarianism of Costa, who visited Tunis in December 1907 and who indicated in a letter his intention to see Converti after so many years. The meeting, if it did come about, was certainly decisive in the decision he made in 1913 when in Calabria to allow himself to be carried along by a vast popular movement that started in the Upper Ionian region of Cosenza province in order to bring attention to the need for certain types of infrastructure in the zone.
All this led him into toying with the idea of driving the masses into forms of direct political action and he created uproar in Italian and European anarchist circles by standing as a candidate in the Cassano Ionio constituency for the 26 October elections, on an anarchist-communist platform. His attempt naturally failed, despite a vigorous election campaign, and remained as a purely theoretical protest against the centralizing State.
Having returned once again to Tunis after a further journey of several weeks in November of that year to his own country, he dedicated himself to his work and family. He continued to work until the early 1930s as a doctor on the night shift at the Italian colonial hospital G. Garibaldi, which he had also helped to found. During the Fascist period he continued his activities, maintaining constant links with C[amillo] Berneri and anarchist and anti-fascist circles in France and America, and "in his few remaining writings, he returned to the volcanic phraseology of his early youth" ([A.] Riggio, ["Un libertario calabrese in Tunisia: N.C.", in "Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania," nn. 1-4, 1947 ] p.87).
While noting that Converti was a die-hard, militant anarchist and "a declared adversary of the regime against which he speaks and writes quite frequently", in March 1933 the Italian consul in Tunis (who had him closely watched in case he were to organize a mission to Italy "for unknown reasons") rejected the possibility that "he [had it] in mind to come to Italy for any criminal intent", even though he could be considered as an individual who was capable of providing aid of any kind to elements who may well commit criminal acts. On 14 August 1936 - according to the consul - he participated in a demonstration in support of the Spanish Popular Front and spoke out to declare his faith "in a better future for a regenerated, more fraternal humanity and to send his greetings to his comrades in Spain who are fighting for the triumph of liberty".
He died in Tunis on 14 September 1939 and at his funeral, where he was eulogized by the anarchist Sapelli, the entire anti-fascist community of Tunisia turned out to salute him as one.
SOURCES: see original article in Italian
Fonti: Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Roma), Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, Casellario Politica Centrale, ad nomen; Andreucci Franco, Detti Tommaso, Il movimento operaio italiano. Dizionario biografico, Roma, E. R., 1975-1979, 5 volumi; Dell’Erba Nunzio, Giornali e gruppi anarchici in Italia 1892-1900, Milano, Franco Angeli, 1983; Dizionario Biografico degli Anarchici Italiani, Pisa, Biblioteca F. Serantini editrice, 2003-2004, due volumi; Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Roma, 1960-in corso; Maitron Jean (acd), Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier francais. Troisème partie: 1871-1914. De la Commune à la Grande Guerre, Paris, Les Editions Ouvrieres, 1973-1977; L’Impulso, Livorno, a. VII, 15 gennaio 1955, n. 1, Converti Niccolò (1858-1940).
G. SACCHETTI – La presse anarchiste italienne en Égypte et en Tunisie à la fin du XIXe siècle
Negli ultimi decenni del XIX secolo si sviluppano, a Tunisi come ad Alessandria d’Egitto, importanti comunità italiane composte sia da emigrati per motivi economici sia da perseguitati politici. La Tunisia, tra i paesi del Maghreb, è stata per più lungo tempo la meta preferita dei flussi provenienti dall’Italia. A minatori, muratori, contadini meridionali, si aggiungono ebrei ed esuli delle antiche battaglie risorgimentali (sono 21.000 gli italiani censiti in Tunisia nel 1891). Anche in Egitto, in concomitanza dei grandi lavori per il Canale di Suez, si forma un’analoga comunità, socialmente assai composita, caratterizzata da una forte presenza di esuli politici, ed altrettanto numerosa (25.000 italiani censiti nel 1897).
In quegli ambiti, spesso effervescenti dai punti di vista culturale e politico, trovano utile spazio la predicazione socialista e anarchica anche attraverso la pubblicazione, sia pure irregolare, di periodici. Le condizioni materiali e giuridiche di produzione e diffusione di questa tipologia di stampa – “sovversiva” –, frutto talvolta di iniziative individuali o di piccoli gruppi, sono rese difficoltose da problematiche ambientali, precarietà economica e condizioni di vita dei redattori / stampatori (che spesso operano in clandestinità) e dagli interventi repressivi del “fisco” locale in genere sollecitato delle autorità consolari italiane.
L’anarchismo italiano ed internazionale, in quanto movimento politico e sociale, vive nel contempo una fase di grande fermento ed è attraversato da forti perturbamenti e stimoli di varia natura. La transizione e la svolta di fine secolo sono connotati sia dalla crisi ideologica interna del movimento anarchico, sia dagli attacchi mirati e coordinati a livello europeo messi in atto dagli apparati statali. Quindi gli organi di stampa risentono indirettamente di ambedue questi fattori: da una parte gli effetti della “legislazione anti-anarchica”, dall’altra il vivace dibattito in corso innescato da Errico Malatesta e Francesco Saverio Merlino (e che verrà a piena maturazione negli anni Novanta) contro il terrorismo propugnato dalle correnti individualiste.
La comunicazione intende effettuare un focus sulle due distinte realtà nordafricane:
- su Alessandria d’Egitto, dove esuli internazionalisti – fra cui il tipografo livornese Icilio Parrini – editano (fin dal 1877) le testate « Il Lavoratore » e « Il Proletario » inaugurando così una lunga tradizione locale di pubblicistica libertaria in lingua italiana che si dipanerà per tutto il primo Novecento;
- su Tunisi, dove fra il 1888 e il 1896, escono il settimanale « L’Operaio » (sottotitolo: “organo degli anarchici di Tunisi e di Sicilia”, poi “Organo Comunista Anarchico” e infine “Organo internazionale dei lavoratori”) e la rivista culturale mensile « La Protesta Umana », ambedue diretti dal medico calabrese Nicolò Converti.
Ad esempio « Il Lavoratore », foglio pubblicato ad Alessandria dai bakuninisti italiani in esilio, vede la sua soppressione decretata dopo appena tre numeri dalle autorità egiziane e la contestuale chiusura della tipografia “Ottolenghi”. Successivamente (negli anni Ottanta) funzionerà una stamperia clandestina ad uso dei socialisti anarchici, emanazione di un “Circolo europeo di studi sociali”. L’attività di diffusione di materiali di propaganda libertaria si intreccia con il tentativo di affiancare in armi l’insurrezione arabista del 1882 e con la deriva “illegalista” individualista che, nel corso degli anni Novanta, prende piede nella comunità degli anarchici italiani d’Egitto.
Meno turbolente le vicissitudini de « L’Operaio », settimanale tunisino di lingua italiana promosso e diretto da N. Converti, prolifico scrittore anarchico nonché medico d’ospedale molto conosciuto. Il giornale costituisce insieme un esempio di longevità e precarietà. Si pubblica con varie interruzioni nel periodo 1887 – 1904. Stampato inizialmente nella grande Tipografia “Franco-Tunisienne” e poi in varie altre stamperie professionali, ospita pubblicità commerciali con evidenti finalità di finanziamento: si tratta di trattorie italiane di Tunisi con “servizio di buona cucina a prezzi modestissimi”, di magazzini bazar, dell’ Hotel de Paris, di negozi di liquori… Il Consolato italiano svolge pressioni presso la polizia francese affinché si arresti il redattore responsabile o, quanto meno, si cessino le pubblicazioni del periodico. Ed è il secondo obiettivo che viene alla fine perseguito. Sempre in Tunisia « La Protesta Umana », sottotitolo: Rivista di scienze sociali (medesimo direttore), si trova costretta, nel 1896, a interrompere l’uscita al decimo numero. Ciò a causa dell’entrata in vigore di una legge capestro sulla stampa che impone agli editori esosi versamenti a titolo di cauzione. E neppure andrà in porto il tentativo di trasferire in modo surrettizio la redazione in Italia (a Macerata).
Bibliografia e fonti
– Archivio Centrale Dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale della Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, Casellario Politico Centrale, ai nominativi: Converti Nicolantonio, Parrini Icilio Ugo;
– « L’Operaio », Tunisi, 1887-1904;
– « La Protesta Umana », Tunisi, 1896;
– L. Bettini, Bibliografia dell’anarchismo, volume I, tomo 2, Periodici e numeri unici anarchici in lingua italiana pubblicati all’estero (1872-1971), CP editrice, Firenze, 1976;
– F. Cresti, Comunità proletarie italiane nell’Africa mediterranea tra xix secolo e periodo fascista, « Mediterranea – Ricerche storiche », n. 12, aprile 2008;
– R. D’Angiò, 4 anni in Egitto, « Il Libertario », La Spezia, n. 99, 22 giugno 1905;
– Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français. Troisième partie: 1871-1914. De la Commune à la Grande Guerre, a cura di J. Maitron, Les Éditions Ouvrières, Paris, 1973-1977;
– Dizionario biografico degli anarchici italiani, a cura di M. Antonioli, G. Berti, S. Fedele, P. Iuso, 2. voll., Pisa, BFS, 2003-2004;
– E. Gianni, L’Internazionale italiana fra libertari ed evoluzionisti. I congressi della Federazione Italiana e della Federazione Alta Italia dell’Associazione Internazionale dei Lavoratori (1872-1880), Edizioni Pantarei, Milano, 2008;
– A. Marchi, La presse d’expression italienne en Égypte. De 1845 à 1950, « Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea », n. 5, dicembre 2010;
– G. Masi, Converti Niccolò, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Treccani, vol. 28 (1983);
– P. C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiani da Bakunin a Malatesta, Rizzoli, Milano, 1969;
– P. C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiani nell’epoca degli attentati, Rizzoli, Milano, 1981;
– N. Pasotti, Nicolò Converti, emigrato, medico e rivoluzionario: un calabrese a Tunisi, « La Regione Calabria Emigrazione », nn. 4-5, 1993;
– E. Pea, Vita in Egitto, Arnoldo Mondadori, Milano, 1949;
– A. Riggio, Un libertario calabrese in Tunisia: Nicolò Converti, « Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania », nn. 1-4, 1947;
– “Un Vecchio” [I. U. Parrini], L’Anarchismo in Egitto, « La Protesta Umana », San Francisco Cal., n. 36, 21 novembre 1903;
– E. Zoccoli, L’Anarchia. Gli agitatori, le idee, i fatti, Fratelli Bocca, Milano, 1944.
Roseto Capo Spulico a Roseto Capo Spulico - Autore: Ruggiero, foto
Anarchism in Tunisia: Nicolò (Nicolantonio) Converti, 1855-1939
From entry by G.Masi, in G. Berti, M. Antonioli, P. Juso e S. Fedele
(eds.), "Dizionario biografico degli anarchici italiani," vol. 1 (Pisa:
Biblioteca Franco Serantini, 2003), pp. 439-442.
English translation by Nestor McNab, 2011.
Born in Roseto Capo Spulico (in the province of Cosenza, Calabria) on 18
March 1855, his parents were Leonardo and Elisabetta Aletta, both from
well-off families. He attended primary school in Calabria and moved to
Naples to attend high school, where his teacher for the final year was
Giovanni Bovio. He went on to university to study medicine, though he
did not graduate - as he said to A[ndrea]Costa (with whom he would
always remain friends) - until several years later in 1909 when, after a
long spell in Tunis, the city he was to choose as his principal
residence, he returned to Italy for the first time. Becoming attracted to the ideas of libertarian socialism, which were widely known in Naples thanks to the influence of Bakunin who had lived in the town, he became friends with E[milio] Covelli and other Neapolitan militants. He joined the International, quickly becoming the most active member of the Neapolitan group, and carried on intense propaganda activity, both with contributions to the existing press at the time and with the creation of new bulletins. In 1878 he joined the editorial board of the periodical "Il Masaniello" a fortnightly which, in seeking to fill the gap left by the move of the weekly "L'Anarchia" to Florence, favoured an alliance with the authoritarian socialists. The newspaper, however, was short-lived and after nine issues, each systematically impounded by the police, it suspended publication.
Relations between CConverti and the other Internationals, however, did not come to an end, and led to the founding of the "Pisacane" circle, with Converti as secretary and Merlino as treasurer; there were also several projects, such as one to print a Neapolitan anarchist newspaper (entitled "La Campana"), reviving the previous newspaper and founding a newspaper to counter the positions of Costa. Both plans went awry, partly as a result of clashes amongst the workers among the members, who favoured policies linked to the particular problems of labour but who often lacked the ability to think in wider terms, and the "intransigently" anarchist intellectuals, who were all given to utopistic dreaming and were often unable to reconcile "final goals and intermediate objectives".
In May 1885, Converti published "Il Piccone" in brochure format (as it lacked the necessary authorization). It was an anarchist communist newspaper that was quite rigorous with both the legalitarian socialists and Costa, and with the Republicans, who were in those years of irredentism, held to be the most dangerous elements to the anarchist cause. But his forced departure for France meant that he left the Neapolitan anarchist movement in difficulty (and indeed the movement would henceforth become indistinguishable from the socialist movement and radical democracy in general), halting publication of the newspaper for a month and only succeeding in recommencing, until November, thanks to an editorial team composed entirely of students.
Though by now out of Italy, C. also supported "Il Demolitore", the newspaper of the Neapolitan "Il Lavoratore" Circle, in which he published a letter written together with G(aetano?) Grassi where the two anarchists took a strong position in favour of a modern revolutionary organization. He contributed to the Milan magazine, "Rivista internazionale del socialism" (in which he published an article entitled "La proprietà" ["Property"]), to the Pesaro weekly "In Marcia" and to other anarchist-inspired periodicals, including "Il Proletario" from Palermo, in which he published an article entitled Anarchia ["Anarchy"] that concluded by saying "anarchy without communism is impossible". A turning point in his life came in 1885 when, having been sentenced to 22 months in prison for signing "a manifesto by the International (the last to be published in Italy) signed by over 300 delegates of branches and federations", for which "only about fifteen were tried" and "appeals were lodged just to give enough time for the accused to flee the country" ("L'Adunata dei refrattari", 28 Oct. 1939, p.5), he took the decision to leave Italy.
Embarking at Livorno, he took refuge in Corsica and then moved to southern France, first at Nice, where he shifted the editorial line of the newspaper "Lo Schiavo" to one of revolutionary anarchism, and then in Marseilles. Here he would once again begin to engage in revolutionary propaganda and with the help of some Italian and French anarchists, he founded the "L'Internationale anarchiste", which eventually came out on the 16 October 1886 after struggling to find funding. The newspaper, containing articles in both French and Italian, had a run of four issues and was quite an important novelty for the anarchist press.
As he wrote in the editorial, the paper set itself the task of "bringing an end to the hatred created and sustained by the bourgeois press between French and Italian workers", and also the goal engaging in quality criticism of Republican institutions and doctrine.
These positions were later set out in the pamphlet "Repubblica ed Anarchia" (Tunis, 1889), which is the most important theoretical contribution by Converti and were also republished in the Italian press at the time. The programmatic elements of the pamphlet were rejected however, in particular by E. Matteucci in the Rome newspaper "L'Emancipazione", and it was impounded by the authorities. Having failed to conclude an arrangement to contribute regularly to two medical journals in Paris, C. moved definitively to Tunis with his friend Grassi on 10 January 1887, once again leaving the Italian anarchist movement in southern France in difficulty.
Since the earliest period of the liberal movement during the years of the Risorgimento, the African city had become a place of refuge for numerous Italians (particularly Sicilians) suffering from political persecution, and was home to a community of bourgeois and illiterate proletarians who mixed readily with the locals and consisted of over 100,000 individuals by 1912. In this community, considered at the time to be a sort of African appendix to Italy's territory and which was predominantly Italian-speaking, and thanks to the circle of friends he soon made (through his uncle, a bishop, according to some sources), Converti was to live the rest of his life, working with great dedication as a doctor in the local hospitals.
A note by the Prefect of Cosenza indicates that Converti graduated in medicine in Tunis thanks to favourable intervention by a cardinal. But having obtained his degree, his sterling work contributed to the extension of the Tunisian healthcare system -in his opinion far from being acceptable - and setting up the "Green Cross" Relief Society [Società di soccorso "Croce Verde"], to the approval even of Muslims, an organization which he presided over for several decades.
Apart from his work as a doctor to the indigent, C. soon became one of the fathers of the Maghrebi workers movement, continuing his journalistic battles, remaining in contact with international libertarian circles, contributing to several Italian and foreign anarchist papers and publishing "L'Operaio" in 1887, a weekly that described itself as the mouthpiece of the anarchists of Tunis and Sicily. With simple language and a style which avoided emphasis and rhetoric, this "rag" - produced at the newspapers own press - attacked the two main Christian groups of the local bourgeoisie, the French and Italian, thus seeking to "shake the workers and the grey mass of the indifferent out of their apathy" about the exploitation being carried out by the larger companies. Later there followed a syndicalist newspaper, "La Voix de l'Ouvrier", in which Converti busied himself by studying the causes of misery and possible cures for this curse.
At the same time, C. formed an active anarchist propaganda group, a real hive of conspiracy which was also set up in order to organize and aid Italian anarchists who had fled to Tunisia in order to escape forced residence [translator's note: used as punishment for political crimes, but also as a preventive measure; it was not imprisonment or confinement, but one was forced to live in a certain place, usually an inaccessible spot or island and weren't free to move away] in the various islands of Sicily (mainly Favignana and Pantelleria).
In 1896 he started the theoretical magazine "La Protesta umana", whose contributors included well-known libertarian writers of the time such as A[ugustin] Hamon, L[uigi] Fabbri, A[milcare] Cipriani and P. Raveggi. Converti published some of his own writings too, including a three-part essay, "Idee generali" ("General Ideas"), in which he polemicized with the German theoreticians of naturalism about the concept of the State, seen as the "brain" of the social body. There was also an important and vibrant protest in defence of some Italian anarchists who had fled their forced residence, landed on the shores of Tunisia and been handed over to the French and Italian authorities. After an interval of some time due to tax reasons, the magazine was moved for one issue (June 1897) to Macerata, qualifying it as the only anarchist publication [in Italy] at the time.
In order to spread his theories, C. did not disdain from writing for certain bourgeois democratic news-sheets in the years between 1894 and 1913; many French and Italian newspapers, anarchist or otherwise, published his articles concerning the debate on the political and economic organization of the working masses. These papers included: "La Petite Tunisie" from Tunis, "L'Avenir social" and "Le Courier", both from Tunis, "L'Emancipateur" from Algiers, "Il Progresso" from Palermo, "Il Picconiere" from Marseilles, "L'Avvenire sociale" from Messina, all of which were anarchist papers; "Il Secolo" and "La Gazzetta" from Milan, "Il Momento" from Paris and also the "Unione" from Tunis, the official mouthpiece of the Italian community, founded by the Livornese.
In the early 1900s, there was a partial evolution in his revolutionary propaganda, partly due to the conditions of the Tunisian working class, who were the target of great attention from democratic circles, and this led to the creation of benevolent societies as well as a move towards the ideas and the parliamentarianism of Costa, who visited Tunis in December 1907 and who indicated in a letter his intention to see Converti after so many years. The meeting, if it did come about, was certainly decisive in the decision he made in 1913 when in Calabria to allow himself to be carried along by a vast popular movement that started in the Upper Ionian region of Cosenza province in order to bring attention to the need for certain types of infrastructure in the zone.
All this led him into toying with the idea of driving the masses into forms of direct political action and he created uproar in Italian and European anarchist circles by standing as a candidate in the Cassano Ionio constituency for the 26 October elections, on an anarchist-communist platform. His attempt naturally failed, despite a vigorous election campaign, and remained as a purely theoretical protest against the centralizing State.
Having returned once again to Tunis after a further journey of several weeks in November of that year to his own country, he dedicated himself to his work and family. He continued to work until the early 1930s as a doctor on the night shift at the Italian colonial hospital G. Garibaldi, which he had also helped to found. During the Fascist period he continued his activities, maintaining constant links with C[amillo] Berneri and anarchist and anti-fascist circles in France and America, and "in his few remaining writings, he returned to the volcanic phraseology of his early youth" ([A.] Riggio, ["Un libertario calabrese in Tunisia: N.C.", in "Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania," nn. 1-4, 1947 ] p.87).
While noting that Converti was a die-hard, militant anarchist and "a declared adversary of the regime against which he speaks and writes quite frequently", in March 1933 the Italian consul in Tunis (who had him closely watched in case he were to organize a mission to Italy "for unknown reasons") rejected the possibility that "he [had it] in mind to come to Italy for any criminal intent", even though he could be considered as an individual who was capable of providing aid of any kind to elements who may well commit criminal acts. On 14 August 1936 - according to the consul - he participated in a demonstration in support of the Spanish Popular Front and spoke out to declare his faith "in a better future for a regenerated, more fraternal humanity and to send his greetings to his comrades in Spain who are fighting for the triumph of liberty".
He died in Tunis on 14 September 1939 and at his funeral, where he was eulogized by the anarchist Sapelli, the entire anti-fascist community of Tunisia turned out to salute him as one.
SOURCES: see original article in Italian
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